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September 4, 2012

Weird Attempt at Being Clever

-- The author satires, results pending

Salt Lake (Spitwads) -- One year after walking away from public schooling with his accounting degree in hand, 26-year-old Spencer Hansen is sueing the state of Utah for its rampant use of the plus sign in the education system. The plus sign, which Mr. Hansen argues resembles the religious symbol of the cross, has no place within an education system that it is backed by public funds. "It is important that this 'plus sign', if you can even call it that, not be displayed to the exclusion of everyone else," said Mr. Hansen's lawyer, the esteemed Ryan Pearson. "This case is about inclusion, it is not about the elimination of religion, it is about the inclusion of everyone. Why should Christianity be the only religion represented in the world of mathematics?”

Not everyone is on board with the Hansen litigation team. “I think the odds of a court ordering the plus sign removed are literally zero,” said O'Bryan Farnsworth, Spitwad's legal analyst. “The education system is not building a place for religious worship, they are preserving a mathematical pastime that was meaningful to a great many people and will continue to remain meaningful for many generations to come.”

In documents submitted to local courts, the state education board defends the inclusion of the cross, er, plus sign, saying that “the math departments' decisions to display particular objects, such as the plus sign, on chalkboards or white boards, are not state actions to which Constitutional protections apply.”

The state education board says it includes the plus sign among the other math characters because “the plus sign became an icon of hope and comfort for everyone who struggled with double-digit subtraction in second grade, a symbol that even if you can't subtract, at least you can probably add.”

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